Duane Michals

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I don't get straight people, but I understand what they look like.
- Duane Michals
Collection: People
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You can’t teach art, so ART SCHOOL is a contradiction in terms.
- Duane Michals
Collection: Art
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Then all at once in late August's heat, tall leafless stalks crowned with iridescent pink and purple blossoms burst from the purgatory in the earth. This arcane act of nature, though perceived by us as ordinary, is a manifestation of Maya's phantom play, the great immensity expressed in every way. My garden is the universe. I am the universe. I am my garden. All things are the same.
- Duane Michals
Collection: Garden
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One of the marvelous things about film is that if you expose it long enough you're going to get a picture.
- Duane Michals
Collection: Long
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I never photograph sunsets and I never photograph moonrises. I'm not interested in what things look like.
- Duane Michals
Collection: Sunset
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I often try to photograph things about a person that are not visible.
- Duane Michals
Collection: Trying
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If I indulge myself and surrender to memory, I can still feel the knot of excitement that gripped me as I turned the corner into Rue Mimosas, looking for the house of Rene Magritte. It was August, 1965. I was 33 years old and about to meet the man whose profound and witty surrealist paintings had contradicted my assumptions about photography.
- Duane Michals
Collection: Photography
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You can never capture a person in picture, never. You might get an interesting expression or gesture. I almost never research a picture subject ahead of time. I think Karsh is full of baloney. Can you imagine spending a whole week out in La Jolla with Jonas Salk soaking up his ambiance, then wind up making him look as if he's in the studio in Ottawa with his thumb under his chin?
- Duane Michals
Collection: Thinking
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If I was concerned about being accepted, I would have been doing Ansel Adams lookalikes, because that was easily accepted. Everything I did was never accepted...but luckily for me, my interest in the subject and my passion for the subject took me to the point that I wasn't wounded by that, and eventually, people came around to me.
- Duane Michals
Collection: Passion
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Taking the photograph is the easiest part for me
- Duane Michals
Collection: Photograph
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If you look at a photograph, and you think, 'My isn't that a beautiful photograph,' and you go on to the next one, or 'Isn't that nice light?' so what? I mean what does it do to you or what's the real value in the long run? What do you walk away from it with? I mean, I'd much rather show you a photograph that makes demands on you, that you might become involved in on your own terms or be perplexed by.
- Duane Michals
Collection: Beautiful
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Trust that little voice in your head that says ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting if...’; And then do it.
- Duane Michals
Collection: Trust